1.

0 Introduction

In the era of big data dominated by social networks, personal data is often used for
merchant marketing or product services. The Internet has developed rapidly, but
network management cannot keep up with the pace of development, and network
security and personal privacy leaks often occur.
As a social networking service website in the United States, Facebook also ranks first
in usage in the world. On March 17, 2018, the New York Times and other media
revealed that more than 50 million user information data on Facebook was named by
a company Cambridge Analytica's company was improperly acquired for use in the
2016 US presidential election (Carole and Emma,2018). This incident has caused a
great stir around the world and caused people's enthusiasm for the privacy protection
of social network data.The origin of this matter is exactly related to the violation of
scientific research ethics, Next, we will analyze one by one according to the ethical
issues that Facebook has with its users and stakeholders.
Facebook also has a number of ethical issues on the privacy of users' information,
One of the loopholes in Facebook is to leak personal information of users to anyone
who has some kind of connection with Facebook users. Personal information such as
email addresses and phone numbers of 6 million Facebook users have been exposed.
This leaves the user in a position where data security will face various threats.The
vulnerability was reportedly discovered by a white hat hacker. When the incident was
revealed, Facebook explained that this was so that users could analyze the data to
create friend recommendations (Josh,2018).
In addition, in June 2014, Facebook manipulated nearly 700,000 users' news feeds
without user consent. This is undoubtedly another ethical issue. Specifically,
Facebook conducted experiments on emotion manipulation by randomly drawing
users' browsing records and data, showing many positive or negative posts to users,
and its research purpose is to understand how emotions are transmitted through social
media. As a result, users feel angry and sad that they are being teased (BBC,2014).
Another ethical issue is that Facebook claims that third-party applications can only
access the data they need to operate, but in fact these applications can access almost
all personal data of users, so Facebook accepted the Federal Trade Commission
Accused it of deceiving consumers and accepted penalties (FTC,2011).

2.0 Theories of ethics

2.1 Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a moral theory, the main philosophers are John Stuart Mill and
Jeremy Bentham, They stand for does not consider the motivation and means of one's
behavior, but only considers the effect of the result of one behavior on the maximum
happiness value. Mill believes that the only purpose of human behavior is to obtain
happiness, so the promotion of happiness has become the standard for judging all
human behavior (Brain and Henry,2020).
According to an Utilitarian lens,the Facebook Emotional Manipulation study would
be considered unethical.Every action that people take on social networks reflects
psychological characteristics such as personality and internal states. As such,
Facebook captured these characteristics, monitoring and manipulating emotions
through the traces left by users on the platform, leaving many users' emotional
information under negative and intentional control. For example, they recommend
specific advertisements to users based on their emotional information. This often
causes stress and injury to users. Utilitarianism believes that it is good to increase the
maximum happiness value; on the contrary, it is evil, and Facebook gains more
benefits than users. As a result, Facebook's behavior is inconsistent with utilitarian
standards.

2.2 Virtue ethics

Virtue is a character characteristic manifested in habitual behavior. In contrast to

moral theory, virtue ethics does not assume that the primary concern of morality is the
maximization of good. Instead, it seems that a good life should include the
development of personality traits such as courage, hard work, kindness, integrity, and
friendship (Lars,2018). Facebook's exposure of users 'personal information has
threatened users' data security, which is a manifestation of Facebook's dishonesty.
Today, personal information can be exchanged with network data and data processing
capabilities have been enhanced, which has led to the easy aggregation of personal
information, which has been analyzed at the data level, which has exposed too much
personal privacy and left users being harassed by information or phone calls. Impact,
there will even be fraud by some illegal companies, which will undoubtedly cause
great harm to users.
Overall, Facebook’s misuse of a user's personal information would lead Virtue
theorists to summarize that the company is unethical in their actions.

2.3 Deontological ethics

Deontology is an ethical theory, which states that the correctness of action can be
determined by examining the action itself, without having to pay attention to the
consequences of the action, that is to say, it emphasizes the importance of moral
obligations and responsibility obligations, only to see whether the behavior is ethical
rules such as laws and regulations (Kant, 1998). Facebook falsely claims that third-
party applications installed by users can only access the user information they need to
operate, but in fact these applications can access the personal data of almost all users,
a deceptive behavior that violates federal law (ftc.gov,2011). This ethical approach is
applicable to the assessment of information privacy, which must be observed.Clearly,
Facebook does not comply with this behavior law, so it is unethical.
1. Facebook settled with the Federal Trade Commission in 2011 over charges that it
didn't keep its privacy promise to users by allowing private information to be made
public without warning.
Regulators said Facebook falsely claimed that third-party apps were able to access
only the data they needed to operate. In fact, the apps could access nearly all of a
user’s personal data. Facebook users that never authenticated a third-party app could
even have private posts collected if their friends used apps. 

2. Facebook bug exposes private contact info

A bug exposed the email addresses and phone numbers of 6 million Facebook users to
anyone who had some connection to the person or knew at least one piece of their
contact information.
The bug was discovered by a White Hat hacker — someone who hacks with the
intention of helping companies find bugs and build better security practices.
When people joined Facebook and uploaded their contact lists, Facebook explained it
would match that data to other people on Facebook in order to create friend
recommendations (Josh ,2013)

3. Mood-manipulation experiment on thousands of Facebook users

Facebook's mood-manipulation experiment in 2014 included more than half a million

randomly selected users. Facebook altered their news feeds to show more positive or

negative posts. The purpose of the study was to show how emotions could spread on

social media. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of

Sciences, kicking off a firestorm of backlash over whether the study was ethical.